THERE (Yankee) – A curatorial project

May 24, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

To stand in front of one of the photographs made by emerging photographer, Sasha Phyars-Burgess, is to stand at the point where documentary and art collide. In line with the wave of photographers creating imagery from positions of marginality, Phyars-Burgess has made use of the technology of photography as a tool for self-reflexivity and self-redefinition. She has examined aspects of contemporary Trinidadian life from the vantage point of a first-generation American grounded in the culture of this distant, yet familiar […]

Categories: Exhibition, Personalities, Uncategorized • Tags: African American, African Diaspora, back and white, Bard College, brooklyn, caribbean, Caribbean Diaspora, Cornell MFA, cornell university, documentary, En Foco, Exhibition, family, fine art, Harlem, ICP, identity, immigrant, International Center of Photography, Mariamma Kambon, migration, Mink Building, New York, Pennsylvania, photographer, photography, photojournalism, Sasha Phyars-Burgess, SoHarlem, transnational West Indian family, Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidadian, west indian, yankee

Altars of Poverty

June 14, 2015 by Mariamma Kambon

Altars of Poverty, my thesis show, grew out of my interest in a particular detail that I uncovered while researching the Black Power Revolution in Trinidad and Tobago. The movement seemed to have been transformed in scale and importance at the specific moment when the then small group of protesters – consisting mainly of university students and public transportation workers – entered a Roman Catholic cathedral in the heart of the nation’s capital. This famous cathedral was devoted to the […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: 1970, altars of poverty, Black Power, capitalism, catholic, church, colonialism, cornell university, death penalty, death row, Ithaca, Mariamma Kambon, martin carter, mass incarceration, MFA Thesis, New York, postcolonial, salt, sugar, Thesis, Tjaden Gallery, Trinidad and Tobago, white divinity

“Omen” featured in group show, EXPLICIT PROTOCOL

November 27, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

The piece, “Omen/ He Dances in the Courtyard of the Impertinent” was on display in Tjaden Gallery, Ithaca, NY from October 21 to November 1, 2013, in the group show “Explicit Protocol” Decades ago, “justice” was already an ambiguous term when applied to the carceral system of the United States, with its overt and inherent biases of class and particularly of race. In 1967, in a letter to his father, from solitary confinement, George Jackson had a clear concept of […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: abolition, Anarchist Black Cross, Angela Davis, Betye Saar, cornell university, Exhibition, explicit protocol, George Jackson, he dances in the courtyard of the impertinent, history, installation, James Baldwin, Jericho Movement, liberation theology, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, Mecke Nagel, omen, Paget Henry, politicized cosmologies, politicized theology, prison, prison abolition, prison industrial complex, rebellion, resistance, shango, slavery

Omen/ He Dances in the Courtyard of the Impertinent

November 26, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

Water by the side of fire at the center of the sky A strange thing, on the road to Teji Oku He strikes a stone in the forest, stone bleeds blood He carries a heavy stone upon his head without a cushion. Shango splits the wall with his falling thunderbolt. He makes a detour in telegraphic wire Leopard of the flaming eyes Lord who wears the sawtooth – bordered cloth of returning ancestors (egun) Storm on the edge of a […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: abolition, african culture, african retention, caribbean, cornell university, Exhibition, he dances in the courtyard of the impertinent, installation, justice, liberation theology, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, omen, orisha, politicized theology, prison industrial complex, rebellion, resistance, shango, slavery, survival

strange (& bitter) crop: giving visibility to the invisible

September 12, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

Mariamma Kambon’s work traces the tumultuous struggles for power and self-actualization that have existed since historic encounters imposed the definition of race onto humanity, and with it, the racialization of morality, beauty and endemic worth. She uses photography and multi-media installation to decode the connections between our present reality and the past that has shaped it. “strange (& bitter) crop” is a sparse and impersonal visualization of the hot and contentious harvest of flesh, blood, bone and brain matter that […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: acrylic, ARC magazine, cornell university, Exhibition, experimental gallery, inmates, installation, invisibility, Ithaca, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, multi media, plastic, strange (& bitter) crop, strange and bitter crop, strange fruit

Free School

September 6, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

“A Possibility”, a multimedia installation addressing the system of mass incarceration in the United States in the context of historic struggles for human rights, was in “Free School”, the 2013 MFA Group Show at Gary Snyder Project Space, New York in May.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: a possibility, audio installation, Cornell MFA, cornell university, Exhibition, Gary Snyder Project Space, group show, Harriet Tubman, Mariamma Kambon, New York City, nkisi sarabanda, rebellion, resistance, slavery

Shaking Paper

July 18, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

The story “Asha Means Life”, told in boxes made of wooden photographs, was on display in the Olive Tjaden Gallery at Cornell University between October 15-26, 2012, in the group show entitled “Shaking Paper”.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: arts, Asha Darbeau, Asha Means Life, caribbean, cornell university, dance, dream, Exhibition, family, immigrant, Ithaca, miami, milled photograph, motherhood, New York, photography, shaking paper, show, single parent, wooden boxes, wooden photograph